((Most of the RP relevant to this thread can be read here. There's a bunch of plot that happens on Antimony's side of things that I haven't yet posted, but it's not immediately necessary to know. Enjoy!))
***
It had been a few days since Antimony had given shelter to a rather besieged member of the Brass Blades, and since that evening her thoughts had not settled even once. Certain revelations kept her distracted enough that it had begun to affect her work, as well as her sleep, and so it was with determination that she set out from her inn room early this morning with the intention of simply clearing her head. She worried briefly what these only tangentially related complications could mean for her investigation, as well as her impression on Miss Carceri, but as she left the Quicksand and began slow, quiet steps further into the city, she steadfastly pushed those thoughts from her mind.
Ul'dah's constant, stifling walls made it difficult for her to keep track of the time, but by her estimate it was still morning, albeit rather late, by the time her walk took her to what had quickly become her favorite resting spot in the city. Set back from most of the various guilds and businesses, the small courtyard with its single, round fountain was almost peaceful - as peaceful as smelly, chaotic Ul'dah could ever get. The white noise from the fountain helped drown out her worries, however.
And so Antimony settled wearily onto a bench very near the fountain, letting her spine relax against the stone. She could feel a faint spray of mist from the fountain on her ears; the sensation was refreshing. As she sat, she made every effort to relax and not think about corrupt officials or dolls or would-be assassins or being fired or any other such things.
Lingering in the middle of one of Ul'dah's hideous streets -- manmade canyons where filth and starvation settled instead of sand -- K'ile Tia stared at the paved stone a few feet in front of him. At first glanced, he looked composed, with his solemn eyes half-lidded and his hands coupled before him. But his tail shivered. His ears bent backward on his head as though blown by some chilly wind. His left hand shook, and his right hand failed to hold it still.
Through eddies of starvation and sickness mixed with wealth and cheer, K'ile could discern the strangely stoic scent of family. Once the smell of those Miqo'te with whom he shared common blood, history, spirit, had been a warm and welcoming perfume that wrapped places and people of incomparable worth. Now it was a cool scent, old and half-forgotten. It was like venom, aged to potency, boiled and spiced.
Was he a coward? Of course he was. If K'yohko had spoken a single truth in his entire life, it was that. K'ile Tia lingered within sight of the fountain, saw the shadow and distant silhouette of the person he was looking for. Her image was distorted through falling water thrown by the fountain. He found himself reluctant to clear it. Normally memories of people were idealized, and he might have been afraid to damage that memory. But, no, not of her. The memories were terrible, at least those of the last moment. He wanted to destroy those memories. What then, did he fear?
Maybe it was just stupidity.
He shook himself and flung his arms out to either side, put on his ears and huffed. If only K'yohko and K'thalen could see him now, they'd be laughing. If he were watching himself from a distance he'd laugh, too. K'ile Tia was an idiot.
Well, he might as well indulge that. Stupid and idiocy could get him pretty far if he was just lucky and bold, right?
Around the corner he went numbly, hoping he didn't look petrified, sure he looked like a fool with some crooked expression. His tail felt like it was getting in the way of his legs and his ears couldn't decide where they wanted to settle.
K'ile Tia did his best to meander around the fountain. Meandering, he told himself, was the best method of approach. Each step closer filled his senses with that old scent of his sibling, and drew his shoulders eyes down. Though he meandered, his approach felt sudden, so that when he arrived he was surprised to have done so and absolutely unprepared.
He didn't see a single thing out of sorts about her. Dressed like an outsider, maybe aged a bit, but to him she seemed hastily transplanted, only slightly adapted.
K'ile didn't want to sneak up on her, but was inexplicably afraid of uttering a sound. He tried to speak, but choked on it. As he stopped his approach, he forced himself to proclaim his presence, and so he greeted his quarry with a squeaked mumble and a cough. The cough was louder, and the curse the followed it was silent as he averted his eyes in frustration at himself.
Perhaps Antimony had not done as good a job as she had hoped so far in relaxing herself, for when she caught something distantly familiar on the air, followed by what sounded like someone choking, her mind immediately leapt to all of the worst conclusions - many inspired by that horrible doll that remained back in her room.
Bolting upright, she had barely two seconds to think that those conclusions were rather silly as she twisted her head and ears about every which way, before her startled look settled on...
All thought ceased.
Green eyes shook behind round wire frames as she sat utterly frozen. Deep in her gut, she could feel something old and aching stir. The awareness of its wakening made her want to bolt, but her joints and muscles remained locked, as though she'd become carved of stone. She said nothing.
Sweeping over in front of the woman in order to try and recover from his mistake, K'ile found that he still couldn't speak. Hollow greetings mingled with instinctive excuses in his mind, tripping up between questions that needed to be asked and a hundred different things he'd been hoping he'd said five years ago. It all wanted to come out at once, bus his jaw and his chest locked up. For a long moment, he just stood there, looking at the woman, smiling, appearing ever on the verge of speaking.
He exhaled a long "Uuuuuhhhhm," without moving, and then said, "Hey there! Wow. Hi! You've got glasses on."
What was he trying to say?
"They sure are..."
Figure it out!
"Made of glass."
He didn't even remember having that thought, but he must have, because he'd managed to say it. K'ile Tia took this as confirmation that he was actually just as dumb as everyone thought he was. But Twelve take him, he needed to do better! He hadn't come all this way just to make an idiot out of himself! He hadn't let go of her five years ago just so he could find her again and not know what to do with himself.
"K'piru," he said, "Can I get two minutes?"
When he spoke that name, it was as though someone had set a spark to her thoughts, for they all rushed in from corners long forgotten in a single, engulfing flame. She felt her mouth hanging open slightly, her blood echoing deafeningly in her ears and drowning out whatever words the man across from her had continued to say.
Antimony - not K'piru - swayed on the bench, gripping its front edge. What manner of spirit had crafted this illusion, this facsimile of painful familiarity?
She tried to stand, tried to run, found herself frozen still.
Had young K'ailia sent him? Should she have been firmer with the girl, demanded she leave her alone, disavow her ties publically, unequivocally... With a dim panic, she felt the edges of a carefully crafted recovery fraying.
"I thought..." Antimony swallowed and found she could not run from K'ile Tia as she had from K'ailia. There was no wall of pretend identity to hide behind from him. He would smell that lie a malm away, already had.
He found himself reaching forward, just as a gesture, holding out one palm with open fingers. He hoped she didn't notice how his fingers shook, or how he was struggling to breathe. "Just two minutes," he repeated, and then said, "We don't have to talk about anything you don't want to. I just wanted..." It wasn't 'just' anything. There was too much that he wanted for him to even think about.
Antimony's hands tightened, shook around the edge of the bench as she imagined in a white flash reaching out to take his own. An imagined action, nothing more, for she was held down and still by one thousand weights, each weight a thought, a memory, a fear.
He wanted... what? He wanted what? She wanted suddenly to scream at him, thought she had for a moment, shrieking at him to go, to leave her be in her crafted solitude, but that was just a memory. Antimony blinked, tried to focus on the soft tumbling of water behind her.
"You're not..." Real? But he was; she could breathe in his scent as clearly as the night he had tried to hold her, tried to stop her. Part of her wanted Ulanan to round the corner into the courtyard then, for the lalafell to puff up and chase K'ile away just as she had done with K'ailia. But only part of her. "There isn't anything to..." She drew a breath, but it came thin and struggling before she could finish, "... say."
There was a great deal to say. "What if I'm okay with that?" It was easier not to  say it. It would be easier to just not speak at all, and linger until she couldn't stand him anymore, but then what would be the point in coming all the way back to Ul'dah. "Maybe just a little chat. Small. You don't even have to look at me."
A chat. The simplicity of that request was almost absurd when held up against the unraveling panic she felt. She felt herself leaning forward, trying to urge her legs into action, but that familiar face, taught with its own array of emotion, kept her locked in place.
"A chat," her voice echoed her thoughts, faint and shaky. She cursed herself for ever coming to Ul'dah, work assignment or no. She had been alright in Limsa. She had been... functioning. Despite his words, she found she couldn't look away, her eyes seeming trapped in the same stony grip as the rest of her body. Her chest ached. "I don't... know what you want to..."
Now's about the time K'ile would normally get awkward, avert his gaze, pull on one ear. He knew when he wasn't wanted around, and it would only be sane to let her be, go find K'luha, go back to the tribe. On that other hand, that would be insane, because he couldn't just keep on like he had been.
Unable to look away from her, he let himself drop into a crouch in front of the woman. The gesture was familiar, almost supplication. Looking up at her, he said, "It's been five years. Don't tell me to go away again. Just give me five minutes. Five years for five minutes. I just want to know that you're doing alright. What you've been up to."
She hadn't realized it could still hurt this much, Antimony - no, K'piru thought. Even after seeing that Tonberry article, seeing the pictures of her daughters and Thalen, she had cried, been angry at D'hein for even thinking to bring it up. But with K'ile kneeling before her now, it felt almost as though the wounds were fresh. As though he'd come to her in Ul'dah to deliver the news once more.
But he wouldn't be so cruel.
Shaking, K'piru bowed forward, until her head nearly touched K'ile's. It shouldn't affect her this much, not after five years; she'd thought if she hid from it long enough... "I've... got a job," she muttered weakly, and it felt silly to say things like that, such casual things, as though that night out in the desert had been nothing.
The very fact that she hadn't walked away from him directly made him numb. But now, K'ile inhaled her words, her scent, the way she leaned close to him, as though he'd been suffocating. He's lungs opened up and let him breathe again, and he took in so much air that his ribs hurt. The numbness in his limbs and tail turned to a strange tingling.
He smiled, broadly. The smile took over his face and his ears bounced. "A job for gil, I'm guessing? Alchemist, I bet!"
She felt like a child - not for the urge to cry or run away, which were admittedly childish, but because she so desperately clung to the idea of a simple, casual conversation instead of acknowledging K'ile's presence in Ul'dah, its implications, and the way she suddenly wasn't sure if she /should/ run. With nearly five decades behind her, K'piru found she could only act as a child in this moment.
She shut her eyes against a stinging heat and struggled to breathe around the oppressive scent of family. "No," she grimaced, kneaded her fingers against the stone of the bench, which caused them to ache. "An acc... with money. Other people's."
"I don't know enough about gil to understand what that's like. Juggling coins? No idea," he chuckled. The words were coming easier now, which was good. If he only had five minutes out of these five years, he decided it wasn't bad to spend them learning how to talk to her again.
Still, he watched her hands. He could tell what she was feeling. He had no idea what she was thinking, but feelings were more important than that. "You live in Ul'dah?" he said.
She could lie. She could say yes, she does, and then when she left after her job was complete here, they would never find her. They would never know where to look. The thought left her strangely cold. She shook her head before she realized, but the roiling storm of long ignored grief overwhelmed any regret she might have had over that.
Still, she couldn't bring herself to speak again, to answer the question correctly. Instead, whatever words she'd been unconsciously preparing collapsed into a small, choked sound, and she pushed her head against his. On the bench, her tail twisted in agonized coils.
K'ile closed his eyes when their foreheads touched. His smiled didn't waver, but he couldn't make sense of her. There was nothing new about that. He had never learned to understand the shaman, so why should the gil-juggler be any different? She was doing everything short of reaching out to him, but she wouldn't speak.
He decided that if he had to choose between a verbal answer and this simple, slight contact, he preferred the contact. K'ile preferred the closeness to the small-talk. He pushed his forehead back against hers a bit, to return the gesture, and said, "Are you doing well?"
She would not think of what she didn't have. Of whom she didn't have. K'piru repeated this to herself, trying to drown out the thoughts stirred from their shadows by K'ile's presence. If he had been any other...
She didn't know how to answer that question, not in this state. Instead she shuddered out one of her own, one whose potential answer she dreaded, "Why are you... in Ul'dah?"
His smile wavered at the question. The obvious, riskiest answer, as that he had come looking for her. If he said that, and she did anything other than run away, or shut him out, then he would be...
K'ile couldn't even think it. It wouldn't happen. She had run so far, and he had chased her down. She didn't need to know that. It was pathetic. It was at least a little insane. No.
"I came with K'ailia," he said, and forced a chuckle. "She's a pain, but she let me know you were around."
She let out a slow sigh. It made sense, and the relief she felt over knowing he hadn't been forced out, or left the tribe was almost enough to chase away the ache in her chest, if only for a second or two. There was frustration, briefly, that K'ailia had betrayed whatever implicit trust of silence Antimony had expected of her, but she couldn't blame the girl.
She acted then on a sudden, wild impulse, one that surged forward with such force and speed that she didn't even realize it until she found herself wondering how her arms had moved to wrap around K'ile, clutching at him, why her face had buried itself against the side of his head. The ache in her chest had strangely fled, replaced with a hollow sensation, empty. Lonely. "I'm sorry," she muttered. "I'm sorry. I can't... I'm sorry."
For a brief moment, K'ile was paralyzed. His senses weren't prepared for the rush of sensation as K'piru's weight and scent and warmth fell across him. He was blind and numb, deaf and dizzy. But when his senses did return, he found that he had already moved. His body had acted on instincts that had been closed up inside of him for years, and his arms had closed fiercely around her. He held her as though something were trying to pull her away, lay his face into her neck.
For five years, he'd done his best to not even think about K'piru. Not once had K'ile thought of this, imagined the possibility of a moment where she might accept him. He wasn't ready for it. It was overwhelming. He couldn't speak, and his mind was empty.
K'piru could only repeat that apology under her breath, a desperate chant, or a prayer. She didn't know if she was apologizing for leaving, or staying away, or not wanting to return even now - perhaps it was all three.
Or none at all.
The frames of her glasses pushed uncomfortably into her skin, but she ignored the sensation and mumbled on.
Leaving one hand on K'piru's back and laying his other on the back of her head to try and comfort her, K'ile finally spoke, in a shaking voice, "It's okay. You don't ahve to be sorry for anything."
She continued her litany of "I'm sorry"s for a time after K'ile spoke, curling her fingers into his back. She felt as though she should be crying, and her body trembled as though it was, but her eyes remained dry no matter how much they stung.
The absence of his presence stung more now that he had found her, and she wondered with an ill feeling if she could actually manage to walk away again. Maybe she could just stay on this bench, forever. "I can't go back," she croaked into his neck. "I'm sorry. I... you shouldn't have..."
"I'm not going to ask you to go back," Kile said, petting the back of her head. "You can be whatever you want, wherever you want. It's okay."
Okay. She breathed, relaxed just slightly but didn't let go. Her thoughts skittered back to that night in the dunes, the existential terror and grief and overwhelming desperation that had driven her away from everything. K'ile had let her go. He would do it again.
His scent still reminded her of Thalen, but rather than the lancing pain in her chest as though he'd impaled her, there was only that shadowed hollowness. Her breath hitched. She didn't cry. "Limsa," she mumbled almost inaudible, ears laid flat against her skull.
Eyes closed, face still lain into K'piru's neck, K'ile breathed deeply. His senses were beginning to come back. He was beginning to feel her against him, and it gave him a strange comfort. The sensations were not familiar; he couldn't remember ever having been this close to K'piru before Catenau. But the feelings it evoked were nostalgic. It made him feel like...
"Limsa?" He said after a moment. "Sounds familiar."
"A city on the water. Carved into white cliffs." She nearly smiled at her description, but such an expression was still beyond her, not when she felt as though she only barely held the edges of her control together. And her grip was in constant danger of slipping.
"Oh!" K'iles head popped up, and his ears lifted. "I remember Luha mentioning that place! You have to take a boat to get there, right?"
She faltered briefly at the mention of K'luha, her hands loosening against his back. Her sister's daughter; K'ailia's mother. The fiery woman was recalled to her with painful ease. She didn't want to think of them.
K'piru returned her grip, perhaps firmer than before, and her arms trembled slightly. "Yes. From... Vesper Bay." She didn't know why she told him these things. He would only bring the ghosts with him.
"I'd like to go sometime," K'ile said effortlessly, grinning at the though, grinning at sharing any moment at all with K'piru. "I've never been on a boat."
To that, she couldn't respond save to press her nose against his neck. The thought of him traveling to Limsa, to see her, wrenched at her gut with an ill fear. And yet she also thought that in the days before she'd left for Ul'dah, following that troubling evening with D'hein and his nosey article, her home had never felt so lonely. The warring perceptions left her head pounding and her stomach churning.
K'ile listened to her silence. He squeezed her, dropped his chin back to her shoulder, breathed in the air that wrapped her. Slowly, he was beginning to think again. He thought about going to Limsa with K'piru. But hadn't K'luha said she would take him? Five years ago, K'luha had just been a mote of darkness inside a shadow. Dalamud had cast everything in darkness. He couldn't see anyone. There hadn't been anyone.
Five years. Where were all the things he wanted to say to K'piru? All the things he had wanted from her. Had he wanted anything at all? Or was she just, family?
"K'piru," he said, finally. "I've missed you. Really." He squeezed her. "Really."
"I--" She blinked hard over his shoulder, struggled for a time with a conflict of ghost and flame and escape. In truth, she had not thought of K'ile, nor of K'ailia or K'luha, or anyone else in the tribe for most of the past five years. She had locked those thoughts away, built her walls, dug a moat, guarded herself as much as one person could manage against it all. Had she missed anyone? She didn't know. She hadn't allowed herself to think of them long enough to know, not until Ul'dah.
Instead, she just sighed. "It's okay. I'm... I'm alive."
"That's all I need you to be," K'ile said, "Alive and okay. I don't need anything else." He laughed, "The hug helps, though. It helps a lot."
K'piru didn't laugh, nor smile. The panic from before was gone, but she felt now as though she'd swallowed lead and it had settled with an impossible weight in her belly. She leaned back slightly, though she kept her arms on K'ile, and looked past his shoulder. If there was more to be said, she couldn't find it - or, she couldn't bring herself to speak it.
Lifting his head, K'ile wore a solemn expression as he looked over K'piru's expression. He couldn't read it. He would never be able to read her. He felt he should have so much to say to her, and he did, but the words wouldn't come to his lips. He stared at her eyes, tried to look inside of them, tried to find what thoughts and feelings she was hiding inside of them.
To K'piru, there came a new, slow kind of grief the dragged her thoughts as though she were moving through molasses. The pain of it was a dull ache that sunk deep into her body and came wrapped in both the ancient scent of blood K'ile had brought with him and his presence on its own. It was not something she could escape, and she knew she didn't have the will to do so even if she could. He seemed so relieved, so pleased to find her. She wondered when he would leave her be, and the thought dragged her down further. She wanted to be left alone.
Of course. That's why she had surrounded herself with so many people. A widowed lalafell with strange research habits and an even stranger devotion to her security, an elderly assassin whose disturbing actions still had not dissuaded her from continuing contact, a lonely miqo'te yearning for guidance and validation, and even a corrupt Brass Blade who had done her little kindness yet still seemed to pull it from her.
She shifted her eyes to K'ile's face and for once, there was no desperate ghost waiting in those familiar features. She looked down, and her tail stilled, her arms dropping from his back to rest limp in her own lap.
Indulging in the silence for a time, K'ile noticed the hands fall away. It seemed the right time for that. It must've gotten awkward a few minutes ago, but by the Twelve, if he was going to be weak and sentimental in front of anyone, it was going to be K'piru. He could bring himself to take his hands off of her, though he did lean back and move his hands to her shoulders.
He still couldn't think of what he wanted to say to her. No, that wasn't the problem at all. "There's too much I want to talk about," he said, doing his best not to think about the words, just to let them be. "I don't know where to start."
K'piru spent a few moments wading through her own circuitous thoughts to try and figure out what K'ile could want to speak about, but she came up pathetically short. If he asked her more questions about her life, she knew she would likely answer, but she had no complementary desire to know of the tribe. What knowledge K'ailia had thrust upon her had been more than enough. She was better off remaining ignorant of it all, separate from it all.
But if it was just between them, perhaps she could keep herself from crumbling again. Still, she couldn't manage encouraging words; she only lifted her eyes again and watched him quietly.
"Are you going to disappear again?" K'ile said, again without thought. Maybe that one he should've thought out a bit more, but, there it was. "You can if you want to. I just need to know if I'm going to have to wait another five years before I get a chance like this again. If I'll ever."
She would be lying if she said she had not considered it in these endless minutes (hours?) since he'd approached her. More than once. And yet... "I told you where I live." Her tone hung low and quiet. "... I do not intend to leave it."
"Then I want to get to know you again," he said, looking down at K'piru's hands. Her age was more evident there, in her thin fingers, and yet she seemed so young to him. As though she hadn't aged since he'd first gotten to know her, back when he was still a kid. "I want to know what you've been doing, and what you've learned. The world is..." he hesitated, sought words, "The world feels a lot bigger now that I've found you out here in it."
Though she may have seemed young to K'ile, his words left K'piru feeling impossibly old and fragile, that heavy weight that had settled over her dragging on her bones until she thought they might break. Despite this, she felt a taughtness at the corners of her lips and she found herself saying, "I went on an adventure once. I... do not recommend it."
Ducking his had a bit, K'ile said, "That would've been good to know a week or so ago before Luha and I went adventuring. Now she's got a broken hip. So, good advice."
A shadow flickered across K'piru's face and she looked down and away. A question nagged at her, but she could not give it voice; it risked too much of what little control she had. Instead, she took an unsteady breath and said simply, "I'm sorry."
Looking briefly to one side, K'ile then sought out K'piru's eyes again. "What for?"
K'piru winced and, after a moment, shook her head. There was an awkward pause then, where she oscillated between wanting to think of something else to say and wanting to just return to what had resembled a comfortable silence. Eventually she managed one question, not that which had carried such threat just prior, but a significant one nonetheless: "How long will you be in Ul'dah?"
"Uhm." He finally dropped his hands from K'piru's shoulders, though one hand reached for her hands without thought. He almost didn't even notice it, but did end up looking at his hand in veiled surprise. "I don't know. I didn't even think about it. I guess it depends on K'luha and K'ailia. A day or a few. Not long. But, I'll be traveling more soon."
At that, K'piru frowned, the slight wrinkles in her face deepening. "Did you..." Perhaps she had misunderstood earlier, she thought and fought back a sudden nausea. She felt like a hypocrite for reacting in such a way. "You left...?"
"We're here on business from the tribe," K'ile reported, neutral. He watched his hand touching K'piru's as if he expected it to do something. "Famine never really let up, so they're scouting out options and trading more now."
Her fingers flexed under his hand in a small, external display of conflict. "I see." She could not allow herself to think of the implications of his statement, to think of what struggles the tribe might have faced, might now be facing. It would only cause more pain.
She tried to focus on K'ile alone, separate from the others, but no matter what question her thoughts turned to, they all lead damningly to the tribe. All she could think to say, in a half-desperate attempt to turn the conversation away, was a quiet, "Limsa smells cleaner than Ul'dah, in most places."
K'ile muttered. "Oh. That's good." He finally moved his and to grip hers and said, "You should tell me about that adventure you went on! You've probably been places in this world I've never even heard of."
"That adventure," K'piru echoed and looked to their hands. An uncomfortable memory, but not nearly so much as others. She drew a slow breath that shook only on the tail end, deep in her ribcage. "It wasn't so much a... I didn't intend for it." The weak smile that suddenly pulled at her mouth caught K'piru by surprise, not least because she did not feel happy. "An old man saved me from assassins."
Giving K'piru a confused look, K'ile utteed a simple, "What."
It wasn't precisely how things had happened, she knew, but she wasn't sure it would be wise to share the full reality with K'ile. She steeled herself, reminded herself that this was better than discussing the tribe, than discussing family. Perhaps not quite as good as silence, but K'ile didn't deserve that. "I was on a business trip," she began, feeling the calluses of his palms against her skin. An unbidden thought: she wondered if he still danced. "The... ah, assassins were sent by a client. I didn't know... my employer was not what he seemed." She winced, still distantly hurt that Ernefalk and Perelon had betrayed her trust in such a way. Sighing, "It was all rather complicated."
"Sounds like it would make a good story, though," K'ile said. He leaned towards her and gave her a boyish smile, "Did you fight assassins?"
She looked up at that, watching his eyes for a moment, and then a bit sheepishly, "I mostly ran and hid."
"That might count! I want to know everything! How many assassins were there? How often do people try to assassinate you?" He whispered, "Do you have assassins that try to assassinate the other people's assassins?"
It was almost funny how close K'ile's speculation came to the truth. Or disturbing, if one thought too much on it, especially considering recent...
K'piru coughed, ears swiveling forward and backward. "There was... well, yes. The old man was, ah... the first one. I don't know why he didn't kill me," she muttered the last two words so low that she wasn't sure if K'ile would catch them. It had been months since she had last dwelled on that series of terrifying events. "But later he... my friend and I were going to die, but he prevented that." She blinked and smiled sadly. "I make it sound so melodramatic."
He smiled broader when he saw her smiling. "Maybe it was. Maybe you should find a bard and tell him about it! But, details." He squeezed her hand, "We need mroe details! Names and places and stuff. Here," he stood, still holding onto her hand. "I'm figuring out that Ul'dahns like to eat and drink things when they tell stories."
Swallowing, she leaned forward somewhat as he stood with her hand. "What do you mean?" She hadn't intended to tell some grand story, but he'd clearly taken it as such. The endearing nature of that was painful to acknowledge. She could feel the muscles in her legs tensing, caught between that constant war of action and inaction that had gripped her since the moment he'd fumbled out a greeting. She looked down to her lap, feeling inexplicably guilty.
"I mean... I don't know. Don't Ul'dahns have designated places for conversations and stories?" K'ile looked around, and smelt the air. "I thought that was a thing here. Food and drink and stories. Am I wrong?"
"It..." She felt as though she were flailing about, though she remained frozen on the bench. "I don't... know. I'm not Ul'dahn. Are you hungry...?"
"Uhm." He thought about that. He'd run all the way back to Ul'dah from the Shroud, and he couldn't remember pausing for any actual meals, but he hadn't been so maddened that he had foregone food entirely. "I don't know. I wasn’t really thinking about it."
"Oh." A pause, during which she tried in vain to shed the weights pulling at her bones, sinking into her gut. Moments ago, she had been close to shaking them, until K'ile had stood. Her fingers clenched around his on their own. "I can..." She hesitated again, found herself suddenly choking on her words. "If you wanted food, the Quicksand can send it to, ah, my room." He had alluded to famine earlier; though she wouldn't allow herself to think of that in the context of the tribe, it still worried her. But neither did she feel capable of handling the busy pressure of the Quicksand's tavern.
"I'm okay with that," he said gratefully. And then, "Between you and me, these places where the Ul'dahns eat and drink are kind of... They're like caves. Crowded caves." He pulled gently at her hand, to try and help her stand.
K'piru nodded and added quietly, "Too many walls." The pressure of his tugging traveled up her arm to her shoulder, sinking into her chest like a vice. Slowly she stood, her legs protesting and shaky enough that she wondered if she would even make it to the Quicksand. Perhaps it would be for the best if she simply gave him some gil, sent him on his...
Her ears lowered against her head as those thoughts awoke whatever hollow thing had engulfed her. Unconsciously, she tightened her grip on his hand and then breathed out, "It's not far."
"I remember where it is. I was there once." he had been about to release her hand, but when she tightened her grip, he let his fingers stay where they were. It was an odd feeling, to just be standing there holding her hand. In that moment the gesture seemed strange to him, foreign. He didn't understand it, but he welcomed it anyway.
He turned and pulled her along with him. "Let me know if I end up going the wrong way, though."
She felt like a child being dragged off to see the elders, K'piru realized, and then forcefully shook her head to send the thought fleeing.
He did seem to know where he was going, for the most part, which surprised and unnerved her. How long had he - they - been in Ul'dah, and she hadn't known? K'ailia she had been painfully aware of, but the others... she wondered with a bit of a tremor between her shoulders what she might do if they ran into the mother and daughter pair, but found herself utterly incapable of even considering the possibility.
She let K'ile take perhaps a longer route than she would have usually done, perhaps out of some undercurrent of dread towards whatever waited for them at the Quicksand, in her room, but they arrived eventually. The main tavern area was over-loud at noontime, packed with regulars and armor-wrapped adventurers. The former drank and chatted loudly with one another; the latter gathered in small groups near a desk arrayed with strange cards. K'piru had never thought to wonder what those cards were for; it seemed far too dangerous stuff.
When they reached the back halls, she felt herself droop with some relief as the swinging door shut and muffled much of the noise from the tavern. Her own room was down one hall to the right, but she hesitated before leading him there, catching a strange mess of broken wood scattered across the floor in the opposite hall.
She blinked at it, unsettled, for several seconds and couldn't help but think of the doll still lingering in her own room, of Miss Loughree and Megiddo, before shivering and gesturing to the right. "It's... ah, this way," she muttered, still half-eyeing the mess that suggested some rather significant destruction.
K'ile, too, was distracted by the pile of battered wood, but for a different reason. Even from this distance, with the haze of food and alcohol and filthy Ul'dahns thick in the air, K'ile could smell K'luha's scent about that wood. Pulling his hand from K'piru's he said, "I need to look into this."
It was an unpleasant thing for him to say. He'd abandoned K'luha in Thanalan to get away from her. She should've stayed witht he tribe. He should've had this time just for K'piru. And yet here, in the inn, she was inserted into the situation. He could tell by the coolness of the scent that she wasn't present, but he could also tell that she had not left happily. He had spent enough time around Luha to smell the difference.
Five years ago he would have ignored it and clung to K'piru's had, dragged her off to her room, stolen time with her. But five years ago he hadn't trusted her, and he hadn't cared about anyone else. If had been anyone other than Kluha, he may still ahve ignored it.
Even so, as he left K'piru and trotted over to the pile of wrecked wood, every step he took away from K'piru felt like he was putting malms of dark desert between them. He bit down on his nausea and focused his gaze.
"Seven hells," he muttered, looking into the room. It seemed to have been ransacked, but the only people he smelt were K'luha and K'ailia, and a whole lot of anger. He smacked the doorframe and hissed, "Damn you, K'ailia! What did you do?"
As K'ile walked over to what she could now tell was a ruined door, K'piru brought her arms to herself. The divergence of his attention should have filled her with relief, and a small whisper from a place of dark sand and flame told her to retreat to her room and lock him out, to let things go before she started considering other, unwise things.
She'd taken a soft step backwards before she realized what she was doing and then froze. Blinking behind lenses smudged from her earlier fit, K'piru found that icey vice locking down on her joints once more. Behind her, there was solitary escape, but there in the hall, was K'ile. Family.
Wait, K'ailia?
Green eyes widening, K'piru took another step backwards, watching K'ile as though he were on the opposite side of a crevice. K'ailia had... "What is wrong?"
 "They're fighting again," K'ile uttered, voice strained with frustration. He turned away from the room, walking back down the hallway towards K'piru. In his gut, bitterness boiled. He'd finally found K'piru and this was happening, now. Why couldn't K'ailia had just left K'luha alone? Why couldn't K'luha have just accepted things? Their relationship was violently ill.
"K'luha's hip is broken. She shouldn't even be standing, let alone getting in fights with her daughter and running off." With exceptional distaste, he said, "I need to find her before she hurts herself even more."
He stopped walking near K'piru, and sighed heavily. He was looking at the wall, but his displeasure was evident on his face.
There it was: that desperate need to turn and run. Her room, her sanctuary, was mere seconds away, and with him so distracted, she didn't think K'ile would follow. For several seconds, she didn't speak and hardly breathed.
She didn't want to deal with the tribe and its problems, not when she could barely deal with just K'ile, but... K'luha was hurt. Badly. Her hands shook and she pushed them against her arms in a futile effort to still them. "I..." A broken hip. She could handle a broken hip. She wouldn't even have to... "... I will help."
Turning his head towards K'piru hesitantly, K'ile looked the ex-shaman over. Her body-language was unmistakable, even to him. He could feel her trying to pull away from him, just like she had in the desert five years ago. He hadn't forced her to stay then, and he wouldn't now, as much as it made his already-nauseous gut churn to think about it.
He reached out and put a hand on her arm. "Are you sure?"
Her features tense, she forced out a short, "Yes." If she thought too much on it, she was sure to change her mind, to run and hide and try once more to forget everything about them. But with K'luha /hurt/... it changed everything.
"Thank you," K'ile said, and wrapped K'piru up in a suddenly tight hug. He kissed the side of her head without thought, well below the ears atop her head, and avoided acknowledging the gesture. He spun out of the hug quickly, claiming her hand with his own once again to lead her back into the tavern portion of the Quicksand.
Over the rush of voices and scents that assaulted him the moment he opened the door, he said, "Luha's been refusing magical healing, and she won't rest either. Her hip's just been getting worse for the past couple of weeks."
Feeling dizzy with thought and emotion, K'piru did her best to keep up, and to focus on the problem she had allowed to drive this decision. As they moved into the open tavern, she kept her gaze inward, hardly paying attention to where K'ile was leading her. A broken hip, at least weeks old. That alone did not bode well for K'luha, and she tightened her jaw."If... the break has not been allowed to set... a poison could enter her blood."
"You're saying she's going to get herself killed," K'ile responded. "I'll take the blame from Azeyma if that happens. I should've been firmer with those two!"
He brought her out of the tavern quickly. Picking out K'luha's scent was easy for him even in this crowded part of the city. He'd been spending so much time with Luha, fretting so much over her body and emotions and what the woman wanted from him, that he'd become even more familiar with her scent than K'piru's. Though he guessed it fit. He had gotten to know K'luha so well, and K'piru he barely even knew anymore.
He noticed the paths of K'ailia and K'luha had diverged quickly outside of the Quicksand, K'ailia heading off towards the markets and K'luha going towards... the gate? "Twelve damn that woman if she left the city like this."
She followed his gaze, expression tightly closed off and distant, and said only, "She will not have gone far."
"The way you say that worries me," K'ile said, and his hand tightened around K'piru's in an external display of the concern that he'd voiced. He tried not to walk uncomfortably fast for K'piru, since they were connected at their digits, but he couldn't stop the air of hurry about him. The closer they got to the gates, the more sure he was that the fool woman had fled the city.
When they stepped out of the gate, the smells of Ul'dah began to recede, and K'luha's scent stuck out like lightning hanging in the sky. It gave him one more reason to feel sick, and his limbs were beginning to feel numb. K'luha was supposed to be smart enough to take care of herself. That was the entire reason K'ile had been able to commit himself to finding K'piru. Had he misjudged that? Had he misread the woman?
Perhaps he had. The fear in his chest was thick, bubbling with familiar desperation.
At any other time, the sprawling, open desert before them might have put K'piru at ease, a welcome relief to cramped walls and crowds. So close to Ul'dah, however, even outside its main walls, there still lingered the stifling smells of poverty and sickness and too many people clustered into one location. And of course there was the awareness of who K'ile was leading her towards.
K'piru did not speak further as they moved, and her fingers shook around K'ile's grip.
***
It had been a few days since Antimony had given shelter to a rather besieged member of the Brass Blades, and since that evening her thoughts had not settled even once. Certain revelations kept her distracted enough that it had begun to affect her work, as well as her sleep, and so it was with determination that she set out from her inn room early this morning with the intention of simply clearing her head. She worried briefly what these only tangentially related complications could mean for her investigation, as well as her impression on Miss Carceri, but as she left the Quicksand and began slow, quiet steps further into the city, she steadfastly pushed those thoughts from her mind.
Ul'dah's constant, stifling walls made it difficult for her to keep track of the time, but by her estimate it was still morning, albeit rather late, by the time her walk took her to what had quickly become her favorite resting spot in the city. Set back from most of the various guilds and businesses, the small courtyard with its single, round fountain was almost peaceful - as peaceful as smelly, chaotic Ul'dah could ever get. The white noise from the fountain helped drown out her worries, however.
And so Antimony settled wearily onto a bench very near the fountain, letting her spine relax against the stone. She could feel a faint spray of mist from the fountain on her ears; the sensation was refreshing. As she sat, she made every effort to relax and not think about corrupt officials or dolls or would-be assassins or being fired or any other such things.
Lingering in the middle of one of Ul'dah's hideous streets -- manmade canyons where filth and starvation settled instead of sand -- K'ile Tia stared at the paved stone a few feet in front of him. At first glanced, he looked composed, with his solemn eyes half-lidded and his hands coupled before him. But his tail shivered. His ears bent backward on his head as though blown by some chilly wind. His left hand shook, and his right hand failed to hold it still.
Through eddies of starvation and sickness mixed with wealth and cheer, K'ile could discern the strangely stoic scent of family. Once the smell of those Miqo'te with whom he shared common blood, history, spirit, had been a warm and welcoming perfume that wrapped places and people of incomparable worth. Now it was a cool scent, old and half-forgotten. It was like venom, aged to potency, boiled and spiced.
Was he a coward? Of course he was. If K'yohko had spoken a single truth in his entire life, it was that. K'ile Tia lingered within sight of the fountain, saw the shadow and distant silhouette of the person he was looking for. Her image was distorted through falling water thrown by the fountain. He found himself reluctant to clear it. Normally memories of people were idealized, and he might have been afraid to damage that memory. But, no, not of her. The memories were terrible, at least those of the last moment. He wanted to destroy those memories. What then, did he fear?
Maybe it was just stupidity.
He shook himself and flung his arms out to either side, put on his ears and huffed. If only K'yohko and K'thalen could see him now, they'd be laughing. If he were watching himself from a distance he'd laugh, too. K'ile Tia was an idiot.
Well, he might as well indulge that. Stupid and idiocy could get him pretty far if he was just lucky and bold, right?
Around the corner he went numbly, hoping he didn't look petrified, sure he looked like a fool with some crooked expression. His tail felt like it was getting in the way of his legs and his ears couldn't decide where they wanted to settle.
K'ile Tia did his best to meander around the fountain. Meandering, he told himself, was the best method of approach. Each step closer filled his senses with that old scent of his sibling, and drew his shoulders eyes down. Though he meandered, his approach felt sudden, so that when he arrived he was surprised to have done so and absolutely unprepared.
He didn't see a single thing out of sorts about her. Dressed like an outsider, maybe aged a bit, but to him she seemed hastily transplanted, only slightly adapted.
K'ile didn't want to sneak up on her, but was inexplicably afraid of uttering a sound. He tried to speak, but choked on it. As he stopped his approach, he forced himself to proclaim his presence, and so he greeted his quarry with a squeaked mumble and a cough. The cough was louder, and the curse the followed it was silent as he averted his eyes in frustration at himself.
Perhaps Antimony had not done as good a job as she had hoped so far in relaxing herself, for when she caught something distantly familiar on the air, followed by what sounded like someone choking, her mind immediately leapt to all of the worst conclusions - many inspired by that horrible doll that remained back in her room.
Bolting upright, she had barely two seconds to think that those conclusions were rather silly as she twisted her head and ears about every which way, before her startled look settled on...
All thought ceased.
Green eyes shook behind round wire frames as she sat utterly frozen. Deep in her gut, she could feel something old and aching stir. The awareness of its wakening made her want to bolt, but her joints and muscles remained locked, as though she'd become carved of stone. She said nothing.
Sweeping over in front of the woman in order to try and recover from his mistake, K'ile found that he still couldn't speak. Hollow greetings mingled with instinctive excuses in his mind, tripping up between questions that needed to be asked and a hundred different things he'd been hoping he'd said five years ago. It all wanted to come out at once, bus his jaw and his chest locked up. For a long moment, he just stood there, looking at the woman, smiling, appearing ever on the verge of speaking.
He exhaled a long "Uuuuuhhhhm," without moving, and then said, "Hey there! Wow. Hi! You've got glasses on."
What was he trying to say?
"They sure are..."
Figure it out!
"Made of glass."
He didn't even remember having that thought, but he must have, because he'd managed to say it. K'ile Tia took this as confirmation that he was actually just as dumb as everyone thought he was. But Twelve take him, he needed to do better! He hadn't come all this way just to make an idiot out of himself! He hadn't let go of her five years ago just so he could find her again and not know what to do with himself.
"K'piru," he said, "Can I get two minutes?"
When he spoke that name, it was as though someone had set a spark to her thoughts, for they all rushed in from corners long forgotten in a single, engulfing flame. She felt her mouth hanging open slightly, her blood echoing deafeningly in her ears and drowning out whatever words the man across from her had continued to say.
Antimony - not K'piru - swayed on the bench, gripping its front edge. What manner of spirit had crafted this illusion, this facsimile of painful familiarity?
She tried to stand, tried to run, found herself frozen still.
Had young K'ailia sent him? Should she have been firmer with the girl, demanded she leave her alone, disavow her ties publically, unequivocally... With a dim panic, she felt the edges of a carefully crafted recovery fraying.
"I thought..." Antimony swallowed and found she could not run from K'ile Tia as she had from K'ailia. There was no wall of pretend identity to hide behind from him. He would smell that lie a malm away, already had.
He found himself reaching forward, just as a gesture, holding out one palm with open fingers. He hoped she didn't notice how his fingers shook, or how he was struggling to breathe. "Just two minutes," he repeated, and then said, "We don't have to talk about anything you don't want to. I just wanted..." It wasn't 'just' anything. There was too much that he wanted for him to even think about.
Antimony's hands tightened, shook around the edge of the bench as she imagined in a white flash reaching out to take his own. An imagined action, nothing more, for she was held down and still by one thousand weights, each weight a thought, a memory, a fear.
He wanted... what? He wanted what? She wanted suddenly to scream at him, thought she had for a moment, shrieking at him to go, to leave her be in her crafted solitude, but that was just a memory. Antimony blinked, tried to focus on the soft tumbling of water behind her.
"You're not..." Real? But he was; she could breathe in his scent as clearly as the night he had tried to hold her, tried to stop her. Part of her wanted Ulanan to round the corner into the courtyard then, for the lalafell to puff up and chase K'ile away just as she had done with K'ailia. But only part of her. "There isn't anything to..." She drew a breath, but it came thin and struggling before she could finish, "... say."
There was a great deal to say. "What if I'm okay with that?" It was easier not to  say it. It would be easier to just not speak at all, and linger until she couldn't stand him anymore, but then what would be the point in coming all the way back to Ul'dah. "Maybe just a little chat. Small. You don't even have to look at me."
A chat. The simplicity of that request was almost absurd when held up against the unraveling panic she felt. She felt herself leaning forward, trying to urge her legs into action, but that familiar face, taught with its own array of emotion, kept her locked in place.
"A chat," her voice echoed her thoughts, faint and shaky. She cursed herself for ever coming to Ul'dah, work assignment or no. She had been alright in Limsa. She had been... functioning. Despite his words, she found she couldn't look away, her eyes seeming trapped in the same stony grip as the rest of her body. Her chest ached. "I don't... know what you want to..."
Now's about the time K'ile would normally get awkward, avert his gaze, pull on one ear. He knew when he wasn't wanted around, and it would only be sane to let her be, go find K'luha, go back to the tribe. On that other hand, that would be insane, because he couldn't just keep on like he had been.
Unable to look away from her, he let himself drop into a crouch in front of the woman. The gesture was familiar, almost supplication. Looking up at her, he said, "It's been five years. Don't tell me to go away again. Just give me five minutes. Five years for five minutes. I just want to know that you're doing alright. What you've been up to."
She hadn't realized it could still hurt this much, Antimony - no, K'piru thought. Even after seeing that Tonberry article, seeing the pictures of her daughters and Thalen, she had cried, been angry at D'hein for even thinking to bring it up. But with K'ile kneeling before her now, it felt almost as though the wounds were fresh. As though he'd come to her in Ul'dah to deliver the news once more.
But he wouldn't be so cruel.
Shaking, K'piru bowed forward, until her head nearly touched K'ile's. It shouldn't affect her this much, not after five years; she'd thought if she hid from it long enough... "I've... got a job," she muttered weakly, and it felt silly to say things like that, such casual things, as though that night out in the desert had been nothing.
The very fact that she hadn't walked away from him directly made him numb. But now, K'ile inhaled her words, her scent, the way she leaned close to him, as though he'd been suffocating. He's lungs opened up and let him breathe again, and he took in so much air that his ribs hurt. The numbness in his limbs and tail turned to a strange tingling.
He smiled, broadly. The smile took over his face and his ears bounced. "A job for gil, I'm guessing? Alchemist, I bet!"
She felt like a child - not for the urge to cry or run away, which were admittedly childish, but because she so desperately clung to the idea of a simple, casual conversation instead of acknowledging K'ile's presence in Ul'dah, its implications, and the way she suddenly wasn't sure if she /should/ run. With nearly five decades behind her, K'piru found she could only act as a child in this moment.
She shut her eyes against a stinging heat and struggled to breathe around the oppressive scent of family. "No," she grimaced, kneaded her fingers against the stone of the bench, which caused them to ache. "An acc... with money. Other people's."
"I don't know enough about gil to understand what that's like. Juggling coins? No idea," he chuckled. The words were coming easier now, which was good. If he only had five minutes out of these five years, he decided it wasn't bad to spend them learning how to talk to her again.
Still, he watched her hands. He could tell what she was feeling. He had no idea what she was thinking, but feelings were more important than that. "You live in Ul'dah?" he said.
She could lie. She could say yes, she does, and then when she left after her job was complete here, they would never find her. They would never know where to look. The thought left her strangely cold. She shook her head before she realized, but the roiling storm of long ignored grief overwhelmed any regret she might have had over that.
Still, she couldn't bring herself to speak again, to answer the question correctly. Instead, whatever words she'd been unconsciously preparing collapsed into a small, choked sound, and she pushed her head against his. On the bench, her tail twisted in agonized coils.
K'ile closed his eyes when their foreheads touched. His smiled didn't waver, but he couldn't make sense of her. There was nothing new about that. He had never learned to understand the shaman, so why should the gil-juggler be any different? She was doing everything short of reaching out to him, but she wouldn't speak.
He decided that if he had to choose between a verbal answer and this simple, slight contact, he preferred the contact. K'ile preferred the closeness to the small-talk. He pushed his forehead back against hers a bit, to return the gesture, and said, "Are you doing well?"
She would not think of what she didn't have. Of whom she didn't have. K'piru repeated this to herself, trying to drown out the thoughts stirred from their shadows by K'ile's presence. If he had been any other...
She didn't know how to answer that question, not in this state. Instead she shuddered out one of her own, one whose potential answer she dreaded, "Why are you... in Ul'dah?"
His smile wavered at the question. The obvious, riskiest answer, as that he had come looking for her. If he said that, and she did anything other than run away, or shut him out, then he would be...
K'ile couldn't even think it. It wouldn't happen. She had run so far, and he had chased her down. She didn't need to know that. It was pathetic. It was at least a little insane. No.
"I came with K'ailia," he said, and forced a chuckle. "She's a pain, but she let me know you were around."
She let out a slow sigh. It made sense, and the relief she felt over knowing he hadn't been forced out, or left the tribe was almost enough to chase away the ache in her chest, if only for a second or two. There was frustration, briefly, that K'ailia had betrayed whatever implicit trust of silence Antimony had expected of her, but she couldn't blame the girl.
She acted then on a sudden, wild impulse, one that surged forward with such force and speed that she didn't even realize it until she found herself wondering how her arms had moved to wrap around K'ile, clutching at him, why her face had buried itself against the side of his head. The ache in her chest had strangely fled, replaced with a hollow sensation, empty. Lonely. "I'm sorry," she muttered. "I'm sorry. I can't... I'm sorry."
For a brief moment, K'ile was paralyzed. His senses weren't prepared for the rush of sensation as K'piru's weight and scent and warmth fell across him. He was blind and numb, deaf and dizzy. But when his senses did return, he found that he had already moved. His body had acted on instincts that had been closed up inside of him for years, and his arms had closed fiercely around her. He held her as though something were trying to pull her away, lay his face into her neck.
For five years, he'd done his best to not even think about K'piru. Not once had K'ile thought of this, imagined the possibility of a moment where she might accept him. He wasn't ready for it. It was overwhelming. He couldn't speak, and his mind was empty.
K'piru could only repeat that apology under her breath, a desperate chant, or a prayer. She didn't know if she was apologizing for leaving, or staying away, or not wanting to return even now - perhaps it was all three.
Or none at all.
The frames of her glasses pushed uncomfortably into her skin, but she ignored the sensation and mumbled on.
Leaving one hand on K'piru's back and laying his other on the back of her head to try and comfort her, K'ile finally spoke, in a shaking voice, "It's okay. You don't ahve to be sorry for anything."
She continued her litany of "I'm sorry"s for a time after K'ile spoke, curling her fingers into his back. She felt as though she should be crying, and her body trembled as though it was, but her eyes remained dry no matter how much they stung.
The absence of his presence stung more now that he had found her, and she wondered with an ill feeling if she could actually manage to walk away again. Maybe she could just stay on this bench, forever. "I can't go back," she croaked into his neck. "I'm sorry. I... you shouldn't have..."
"I'm not going to ask you to go back," Kile said, petting the back of her head. "You can be whatever you want, wherever you want. It's okay."
Okay. She breathed, relaxed just slightly but didn't let go. Her thoughts skittered back to that night in the dunes, the existential terror and grief and overwhelming desperation that had driven her away from everything. K'ile had let her go. He would do it again.
His scent still reminded her of Thalen, but rather than the lancing pain in her chest as though he'd impaled her, there was only that shadowed hollowness. Her breath hitched. She didn't cry. "Limsa," she mumbled almost inaudible, ears laid flat against her skull.
Eyes closed, face still lain into K'piru's neck, K'ile breathed deeply. His senses were beginning to come back. He was beginning to feel her against him, and it gave him a strange comfort. The sensations were not familiar; he couldn't remember ever having been this close to K'piru before Catenau. But the feelings it evoked were nostalgic. It made him feel like...
"Limsa?" He said after a moment. "Sounds familiar."
"A city on the water. Carved into white cliffs." She nearly smiled at her description, but such an expression was still beyond her, not when she felt as though she only barely held the edges of her control together. And her grip was in constant danger of slipping.
"Oh!" K'iles head popped up, and his ears lifted. "I remember Luha mentioning that place! You have to take a boat to get there, right?"
She faltered briefly at the mention of K'luha, her hands loosening against his back. Her sister's daughter; K'ailia's mother. The fiery woman was recalled to her with painful ease. She didn't want to think of them.
K'piru returned her grip, perhaps firmer than before, and her arms trembled slightly. "Yes. From... Vesper Bay." She didn't know why she told him these things. He would only bring the ghosts with him.
"I'd like to go sometime," K'ile said effortlessly, grinning at the though, grinning at sharing any moment at all with K'piru. "I've never been on a boat."
To that, she couldn't respond save to press her nose against his neck. The thought of him traveling to Limsa, to see her, wrenched at her gut with an ill fear. And yet she also thought that in the days before she'd left for Ul'dah, following that troubling evening with D'hein and his nosey article, her home had never felt so lonely. The warring perceptions left her head pounding and her stomach churning.
K'ile listened to her silence. He squeezed her, dropped his chin back to her shoulder, breathed in the air that wrapped her. Slowly, he was beginning to think again. He thought about going to Limsa with K'piru. But hadn't K'luha said she would take him? Five years ago, K'luha had just been a mote of darkness inside a shadow. Dalamud had cast everything in darkness. He couldn't see anyone. There hadn't been anyone.
Five years. Where were all the things he wanted to say to K'piru? All the things he had wanted from her. Had he wanted anything at all? Or was she just, family?
"K'piru," he said, finally. "I've missed you. Really." He squeezed her. "Really."
"I--" She blinked hard over his shoulder, struggled for a time with a conflict of ghost and flame and escape. In truth, she had not thought of K'ile, nor of K'ailia or K'luha, or anyone else in the tribe for most of the past five years. She had locked those thoughts away, built her walls, dug a moat, guarded herself as much as one person could manage against it all. Had she missed anyone? She didn't know. She hadn't allowed herself to think of them long enough to know, not until Ul'dah.
Instead, she just sighed. "It's okay. I'm... I'm alive."
"That's all I need you to be," K'ile said, "Alive and okay. I don't need anything else." He laughed, "The hug helps, though. It helps a lot."
K'piru didn't laugh, nor smile. The panic from before was gone, but she felt now as though she'd swallowed lead and it had settled with an impossible weight in her belly. She leaned back slightly, though she kept her arms on K'ile, and looked past his shoulder. If there was more to be said, she couldn't find it - or, she couldn't bring herself to speak it.
Lifting his head, K'ile wore a solemn expression as he looked over K'piru's expression. He couldn't read it. He would never be able to read her. He felt he should have so much to say to her, and he did, but the words wouldn't come to his lips. He stared at her eyes, tried to look inside of them, tried to find what thoughts and feelings she was hiding inside of them.
To K'piru, there came a new, slow kind of grief the dragged her thoughts as though she were moving through molasses. The pain of it was a dull ache that sunk deep into her body and came wrapped in both the ancient scent of blood K'ile had brought with him and his presence on its own. It was not something she could escape, and she knew she didn't have the will to do so even if she could. He seemed so relieved, so pleased to find her. She wondered when he would leave her be, and the thought dragged her down further. She wanted to be left alone.
Of course. That's why she had surrounded herself with so many people. A widowed lalafell with strange research habits and an even stranger devotion to her security, an elderly assassin whose disturbing actions still had not dissuaded her from continuing contact, a lonely miqo'te yearning for guidance and validation, and even a corrupt Brass Blade who had done her little kindness yet still seemed to pull it from her.
She shifted her eyes to K'ile's face and for once, there was no desperate ghost waiting in those familiar features. She looked down, and her tail stilled, her arms dropping from his back to rest limp in her own lap.
Indulging in the silence for a time, K'ile noticed the hands fall away. It seemed the right time for that. It must've gotten awkward a few minutes ago, but by the Twelve, if he was going to be weak and sentimental in front of anyone, it was going to be K'piru. He could bring himself to take his hands off of her, though he did lean back and move his hands to her shoulders.
He still couldn't think of what he wanted to say to her. No, that wasn't the problem at all. "There's too much I want to talk about," he said, doing his best not to think about the words, just to let them be. "I don't know where to start."
K'piru spent a few moments wading through her own circuitous thoughts to try and figure out what K'ile could want to speak about, but she came up pathetically short. If he asked her more questions about her life, she knew she would likely answer, but she had no complementary desire to know of the tribe. What knowledge K'ailia had thrust upon her had been more than enough. She was better off remaining ignorant of it all, separate from it all.
But if it was just between them, perhaps she could keep herself from crumbling again. Still, she couldn't manage encouraging words; she only lifted her eyes again and watched him quietly.
"Are you going to disappear again?" K'ile said, again without thought. Maybe that one he should've thought out a bit more, but, there it was. "You can if you want to. I just need to know if I'm going to have to wait another five years before I get a chance like this again. If I'll ever."
She would be lying if she said she had not considered it in these endless minutes (hours?) since he'd approached her. More than once. And yet... "I told you where I live." Her tone hung low and quiet. "... I do not intend to leave it."
"Then I want to get to know you again," he said, looking down at K'piru's hands. Her age was more evident there, in her thin fingers, and yet she seemed so young to him. As though she hadn't aged since he'd first gotten to know her, back when he was still a kid. "I want to know what you've been doing, and what you've learned. The world is..." he hesitated, sought words, "The world feels a lot bigger now that I've found you out here in it."
Though she may have seemed young to K'ile, his words left K'piru feeling impossibly old and fragile, that heavy weight that had settled over her dragging on her bones until she thought they might break. Despite this, she felt a taughtness at the corners of her lips and she found herself saying, "I went on an adventure once. I... do not recommend it."
Ducking his had a bit, K'ile said, "That would've been good to know a week or so ago before Luha and I went adventuring. Now she's got a broken hip. So, good advice."
A shadow flickered across K'piru's face and she looked down and away. A question nagged at her, but she could not give it voice; it risked too much of what little control she had. Instead, she took an unsteady breath and said simply, "I'm sorry."
Looking briefly to one side, K'ile then sought out K'piru's eyes again. "What for?"
K'piru winced and, after a moment, shook her head. There was an awkward pause then, where she oscillated between wanting to think of something else to say and wanting to just return to what had resembled a comfortable silence. Eventually she managed one question, not that which had carried such threat just prior, but a significant one nonetheless: "How long will you be in Ul'dah?"
"Uhm." He finally dropped his hands from K'piru's shoulders, though one hand reached for her hands without thought. He almost didn't even notice it, but did end up looking at his hand in veiled surprise. "I don't know. I didn't even think about it. I guess it depends on K'luha and K'ailia. A day or a few. Not long. But, I'll be traveling more soon."
At that, K'piru frowned, the slight wrinkles in her face deepening. "Did you..." Perhaps she had misunderstood earlier, she thought and fought back a sudden nausea. She felt like a hypocrite for reacting in such a way. "You left...?"
"We're here on business from the tribe," K'ile reported, neutral. He watched his hand touching K'piru's as if he expected it to do something. "Famine never really let up, so they're scouting out options and trading more now."
Her fingers flexed under his hand in a small, external display of conflict. "I see." She could not allow herself to think of the implications of his statement, to think of what struggles the tribe might have faced, might now be facing. It would only cause more pain.
She tried to focus on K'ile alone, separate from the others, but no matter what question her thoughts turned to, they all lead damningly to the tribe. All she could think to say, in a half-desperate attempt to turn the conversation away, was a quiet, "Limsa smells cleaner than Ul'dah, in most places."
K'ile muttered. "Oh. That's good." He finally moved his and to grip hers and said, "You should tell me about that adventure you went on! You've probably been places in this world I've never even heard of."
"That adventure," K'piru echoed and looked to their hands. An uncomfortable memory, but not nearly so much as others. She drew a slow breath that shook only on the tail end, deep in her ribcage. "It wasn't so much a... I didn't intend for it." The weak smile that suddenly pulled at her mouth caught K'piru by surprise, not least because she did not feel happy. "An old man saved me from assassins."
Giving K'piru a confused look, K'ile utteed a simple, "What."
It wasn't precisely how things had happened, she knew, but she wasn't sure it would be wise to share the full reality with K'ile. She steeled herself, reminded herself that this was better than discussing the tribe, than discussing family. Perhaps not quite as good as silence, but K'ile didn't deserve that. "I was on a business trip," she began, feeling the calluses of his palms against her skin. An unbidden thought: she wondered if he still danced. "The... ah, assassins were sent by a client. I didn't know... my employer was not what he seemed." She winced, still distantly hurt that Ernefalk and Perelon had betrayed her trust in such a way. Sighing, "It was all rather complicated."
"Sounds like it would make a good story, though," K'ile said. He leaned towards her and gave her a boyish smile, "Did you fight assassins?"
She looked up at that, watching his eyes for a moment, and then a bit sheepishly, "I mostly ran and hid."
"That might count! I want to know everything! How many assassins were there? How often do people try to assassinate you?" He whispered, "Do you have assassins that try to assassinate the other people's assassins?"
It was almost funny how close K'ile's speculation came to the truth. Or disturbing, if one thought too much on it, especially considering recent...
K'piru coughed, ears swiveling forward and backward. "There was... well, yes. The old man was, ah... the first one. I don't know why he didn't kill me," she muttered the last two words so low that she wasn't sure if K'ile would catch them. It had been months since she had last dwelled on that series of terrifying events. "But later he... my friend and I were going to die, but he prevented that." She blinked and smiled sadly. "I make it sound so melodramatic."
He smiled broader when he saw her smiling. "Maybe it was. Maybe you should find a bard and tell him about it! But, details." He squeezed her hand, "We need mroe details! Names and places and stuff. Here," he stood, still holding onto her hand. "I'm figuring out that Ul'dahns like to eat and drink things when they tell stories."
Swallowing, she leaned forward somewhat as he stood with her hand. "What do you mean?" She hadn't intended to tell some grand story, but he'd clearly taken it as such. The endearing nature of that was painful to acknowledge. She could feel the muscles in her legs tensing, caught between that constant war of action and inaction that had gripped her since the moment he'd fumbled out a greeting. She looked down to her lap, feeling inexplicably guilty.
"I mean... I don't know. Don't Ul'dahns have designated places for conversations and stories?" K'ile looked around, and smelt the air. "I thought that was a thing here. Food and drink and stories. Am I wrong?"
"It..." She felt as though she were flailing about, though she remained frozen on the bench. "I don't... know. I'm not Ul'dahn. Are you hungry...?"
"Uhm." He thought about that. He'd run all the way back to Ul'dah from the Shroud, and he couldn't remember pausing for any actual meals, but he hadn't been so maddened that he had foregone food entirely. "I don't know. I wasn’t really thinking about it."
"Oh." A pause, during which she tried in vain to shed the weights pulling at her bones, sinking into her gut. Moments ago, she had been close to shaking them, until K'ile had stood. Her fingers clenched around his on their own. "I can..." She hesitated again, found herself suddenly choking on her words. "If you wanted food, the Quicksand can send it to, ah, my room." He had alluded to famine earlier; though she wouldn't allow herself to think of that in the context of the tribe, it still worried her. But neither did she feel capable of handling the busy pressure of the Quicksand's tavern.
"I'm okay with that," he said gratefully. And then, "Between you and me, these places where the Ul'dahns eat and drink are kind of... They're like caves. Crowded caves." He pulled gently at her hand, to try and help her stand.
K'piru nodded and added quietly, "Too many walls." The pressure of his tugging traveled up her arm to her shoulder, sinking into her chest like a vice. Slowly she stood, her legs protesting and shaky enough that she wondered if she would even make it to the Quicksand. Perhaps it would be for the best if she simply gave him some gil, sent him on his...
Her ears lowered against her head as those thoughts awoke whatever hollow thing had engulfed her. Unconsciously, she tightened her grip on his hand and then breathed out, "It's not far."
"I remember where it is. I was there once." he had been about to release her hand, but when she tightened her grip, he let his fingers stay where they were. It was an odd feeling, to just be standing there holding her hand. In that moment the gesture seemed strange to him, foreign. He didn't understand it, but he welcomed it anyway.
He turned and pulled her along with him. "Let me know if I end up going the wrong way, though."
She felt like a child being dragged off to see the elders, K'piru realized, and then forcefully shook her head to send the thought fleeing.
He did seem to know where he was going, for the most part, which surprised and unnerved her. How long had he - they - been in Ul'dah, and she hadn't known? K'ailia she had been painfully aware of, but the others... she wondered with a bit of a tremor between her shoulders what she might do if they ran into the mother and daughter pair, but found herself utterly incapable of even considering the possibility.
She let K'ile take perhaps a longer route than she would have usually done, perhaps out of some undercurrent of dread towards whatever waited for them at the Quicksand, in her room, but they arrived eventually. The main tavern area was over-loud at noontime, packed with regulars and armor-wrapped adventurers. The former drank and chatted loudly with one another; the latter gathered in small groups near a desk arrayed with strange cards. K'piru had never thought to wonder what those cards were for; it seemed far too dangerous stuff.
When they reached the back halls, she felt herself droop with some relief as the swinging door shut and muffled much of the noise from the tavern. Her own room was down one hall to the right, but she hesitated before leading him there, catching a strange mess of broken wood scattered across the floor in the opposite hall.
She blinked at it, unsettled, for several seconds and couldn't help but think of the doll still lingering in her own room, of Miss Loughree and Megiddo, before shivering and gesturing to the right. "It's... ah, this way," she muttered, still half-eyeing the mess that suggested some rather significant destruction.
K'ile, too, was distracted by the pile of battered wood, but for a different reason. Even from this distance, with the haze of food and alcohol and filthy Ul'dahns thick in the air, K'ile could smell K'luha's scent about that wood. Pulling his hand from K'piru's he said, "I need to look into this."
It was an unpleasant thing for him to say. He'd abandoned K'luha in Thanalan to get away from her. She should've stayed witht he tribe. He should've had this time just for K'piru. And yet here, in the inn, she was inserted into the situation. He could tell by the coolness of the scent that she wasn't present, but he could also tell that she had not left happily. He had spent enough time around Luha to smell the difference.
Five years ago he would have ignored it and clung to K'piru's had, dragged her off to her room, stolen time with her. But five years ago he hadn't trusted her, and he hadn't cared about anyone else. If had been anyone other than Kluha, he may still ahve ignored it.
Even so, as he left K'piru and trotted over to the pile of wrecked wood, every step he took away from K'piru felt like he was putting malms of dark desert between them. He bit down on his nausea and focused his gaze.
"Seven hells," he muttered, looking into the room. It seemed to have been ransacked, but the only people he smelt were K'luha and K'ailia, and a whole lot of anger. He smacked the doorframe and hissed, "Damn you, K'ailia! What did you do?"
As K'ile walked over to what she could now tell was a ruined door, K'piru brought her arms to herself. The divergence of his attention should have filled her with relief, and a small whisper from a place of dark sand and flame told her to retreat to her room and lock him out, to let things go before she started considering other, unwise things.
She'd taken a soft step backwards before she realized what she was doing and then froze. Blinking behind lenses smudged from her earlier fit, K'piru found that icey vice locking down on her joints once more. Behind her, there was solitary escape, but there in the hall, was K'ile. Family.
Wait, K'ailia?
Green eyes widening, K'piru took another step backwards, watching K'ile as though he were on the opposite side of a crevice. K'ailia had... "What is wrong?"
 "They're fighting again," K'ile uttered, voice strained with frustration. He turned away from the room, walking back down the hallway towards K'piru. In his gut, bitterness boiled. He'd finally found K'piru and this was happening, now. Why couldn't K'ailia had just left K'luha alone? Why couldn't K'luha have just accepted things? Their relationship was violently ill.
"K'luha's hip is broken. She shouldn't even be standing, let alone getting in fights with her daughter and running off." With exceptional distaste, he said, "I need to find her before she hurts herself even more."
He stopped walking near K'piru, and sighed heavily. He was looking at the wall, but his displeasure was evident on his face.
There it was: that desperate need to turn and run. Her room, her sanctuary, was mere seconds away, and with him so distracted, she didn't think K'ile would follow. For several seconds, she didn't speak and hardly breathed.
She didn't want to deal with the tribe and its problems, not when she could barely deal with just K'ile, but... K'luha was hurt. Badly. Her hands shook and she pushed them against her arms in a futile effort to still them. "I..." A broken hip. She could handle a broken hip. She wouldn't even have to... "... I will help."
Turning his head towards K'piru hesitantly, K'ile looked the ex-shaman over. Her body-language was unmistakable, even to him. He could feel her trying to pull away from him, just like she had in the desert five years ago. He hadn't forced her to stay then, and he wouldn't now, as much as it made his already-nauseous gut churn to think about it.
He reached out and put a hand on her arm. "Are you sure?"
Her features tense, she forced out a short, "Yes." If she thought too much on it, she was sure to change her mind, to run and hide and try once more to forget everything about them. But with K'luha /hurt/... it changed everything.
"Thank you," K'ile said, and wrapped K'piru up in a suddenly tight hug. He kissed the side of her head without thought, well below the ears atop her head, and avoided acknowledging the gesture. He spun out of the hug quickly, claiming her hand with his own once again to lead her back into the tavern portion of the Quicksand.
Over the rush of voices and scents that assaulted him the moment he opened the door, he said, "Luha's been refusing magical healing, and she won't rest either. Her hip's just been getting worse for the past couple of weeks."
Feeling dizzy with thought and emotion, K'piru did her best to keep up, and to focus on the problem she had allowed to drive this decision. As they moved into the open tavern, she kept her gaze inward, hardly paying attention to where K'ile was leading her. A broken hip, at least weeks old. That alone did not bode well for K'luha, and she tightened her jaw."If... the break has not been allowed to set... a poison could enter her blood."
"You're saying she's going to get herself killed," K'ile responded. "I'll take the blame from Azeyma if that happens. I should've been firmer with those two!"
He brought her out of the tavern quickly. Picking out K'luha's scent was easy for him even in this crowded part of the city. He'd been spending so much time with Luha, fretting so much over her body and emotions and what the woman wanted from him, that he'd become even more familiar with her scent than K'piru's. Though he guessed it fit. He had gotten to know K'luha so well, and K'piru he barely even knew anymore.
He noticed the paths of K'ailia and K'luha had diverged quickly outside of the Quicksand, K'ailia heading off towards the markets and K'luha going towards... the gate? "Twelve damn that woman if she left the city like this."
She followed his gaze, expression tightly closed off and distant, and said only, "She will not have gone far."
"The way you say that worries me," K'ile said, and his hand tightened around K'piru's in an external display of the concern that he'd voiced. He tried not to walk uncomfortably fast for K'piru, since they were connected at their digits, but he couldn't stop the air of hurry about him. The closer they got to the gates, the more sure he was that the fool woman had fled the city.
When they stepped out of the gate, the smells of Ul'dah began to recede, and K'luha's scent stuck out like lightning hanging in the sky. It gave him one more reason to feel sick, and his limbs were beginning to feel numb. K'luha was supposed to be smart enough to take care of herself. That was the entire reason K'ile had been able to commit himself to finding K'piru. Had he misjudged that? Had he misread the woman?
Perhaps he had. The fear in his chest was thick, bubbling with familiar desperation.
At any other time, the sprawling, open desert before them might have put K'piru at ease, a welcome relief to cramped walls and crowds. So close to Ul'dah, however, even outside its main walls, there still lingered the stifling smells of poverty and sickness and too many people clustered into one location. And of course there was the awareness of who K'ile was leading her towards.
K'piru did not speak further as they moved, and her fingers shook around K'ile's grip.
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"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
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. It also reminds me that Anti is supposed to be sending reports to Illira. Has she ICly been doing that? If not it could totally be an excuse for her to go to Ul'dah to figure out whats been going down in radio silence!))
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